Saturday, October 4, 2008

Oh Please, Belinda...How About SHE'S INCOMPETENT?

Belinda Luscumbe writes for Time Magazine:

Some polls are suggesting that after gaining an initial bump, McCain's campaign is being hobbled by Sarah Palin's vice-presidential candidacy. The voters who are deserting her fastest, some of whom are even calling on her to withdraw, are mostly women.

Ah, women, the consistently, tragically underestimated constituency. What the Democrats learned during the primaries and the Republicans might now befinding out the hard way, I learned at my very academic, well-regarded all-girlshigh school: that is never to discount the ability of women to open a robust, committed, well-thought-out vat of hatred for another girl.

Women are weapons-grade haters. Hillary Clinton knows it. Palin knows it too. When women get their hate on, they don't just dislike, or find disfavor with, or sort of not really appreciate. They loathe - deeply, richly, sustainingly. I do not say this to disparage my gender; women also love in more or less the same way.

When men disagree, the steps to resolution are reasonably clear and unsophisticated. Acts of physical violence are visited upon one another's person or property, and the whole thing blows over. Women? Nu-unh. We savor the discord. We draw it out. We share our contempt with our friends, like a useful stock tip, or really good salsa. And then we all go hate together: a mutually encouraging group activity for when the book group gets quiet.

The hatred women have for Sarah Palin, and others had for Hillary before her, is not necessarily about politics. Anybody can run the numbers on how many people Palin's pro-life, pro-gun, socially conservative policies will seduce and how many they will alienate. Rather, the test that the McCain campaign failed to put her through was the Abbotsleigh Ladies College test. (Named after my high school. Go, green and gold!). It's a simple three-point pass-fail exam: Will the other girls like her?

Here's why Palin doesn't make the grade:

1. She's too pretty. This is very bad news. At school, pretty girls tend to be liked only by other pretty girls. The rest of us, whose looks hover somewhere around underwhelming, resent them and whisper archly of their "unearned attention." So, if everyone calls your candidate "hot," you're in a whole mess of trouble. If the Pakistani head-of-state more or less hits on her, well, yes, she'll get a sympathy vote, but we're in Dukakis-in-the-tank territory. It's an admiration vaporizer. (Of course a candidate can't be too ugly, or it will scare the men, who are clearly shallow as a gender.)

2. She's too confident. This also bodes ill. Women have self-esteem issues. But they also have other-women's-esteem issues. As almost any woman - from the head of the Budgerigar Breeders association to Queen Elizabeth - can attest, it's almost impossible to get confidence right. Too timid and you're a pushover. Too self-aggrandizing and you're a bad word unless it's about a dog, or Project Runway's Kenley. Or Michelle, my best friend until 9th grade, after she won that debating prize and got cocky.

3. She could embarrass us. History is not on Palin's side. Every time a woman gets a plum job, be she Hewlett-Packard's ex-boss, Carly Fiorina, or CBS's Katie Couric, there's always that whispery fear that people will think she got the job just because she's a woman. So if things don't go well - and a couple of YouTube clips have suggested that they're certainly not going well for Palin - women are the first to turn on her for making it harder for the rest of us to louse up at work.

The fact of the matter is once a female decides it's over with another female, it's like an end-stage marriage. No matter how seemingly benign, every attribute becomes an affront: the hair, the voice, the husband, the moose-shooting, the glasses, the big family, the making rape victims pay for their own rape test kits.

I know, I know. With all this extra baggage a female candidate has to bear, the chances of finding a woman whom other women won't hate seem skinnier than last year's jeans. But don't despair, if all else fails, we could just do what we always do and just vote in some guy. It's worked so well for us in the past.

Now, I do agree that at times women do get caught up in relationships issues more than men...we might have a tendency to carry a grudge more than men. I say this as the mother of boys. However, there is also a difference in personality at play. My oldest son is one of the most forgiving people I know, while my middle son is a true grudge-carrier, even though he's got a sweet temperament underneath it all.

However, to state that women do not like Sarah Palin because of her looks or her confidence, or because she will embarass us, is completely insulting to the intelligence of women. How about we don't like her because SHE DOESN'T KNOW WHAT SHE IS TALKING ABOUT, she is completely shallow, and she is trying to fake her way to the vice-presidency?!

Mike just asked me why, on the CNN tracking line, men responded better to Palin than women. This is why--read Rich Lowry's (editor of the conservative National Review) comments on Sarah Palin:

"I'm sure I'm not the only male in America who, when Palin dropped her first wink, sat up a little straighter on the couch and said, "Hey, I think she just winked at me." And her smile. By the end, when she clearly knew she was doing well, it was so sparkling it was almost mesmerizing. It sent little starbursts through the screen and ricocheting around the living rooms of America. This is a quality that can't be learned; it's either something you have or you don't, and man, she's got it!"

The blogosphere is full of people writing about the right-wing republican men getting erections watching SP. Here is a comment from a reader on the Atlantic web site:

"In reaction to Rich Lowry, I'm sure I'm not the only woman who, upon reading his words, sat up a little straighter and said, 'Is he kidding? Is he goddamn kidding me?' Is this the kind of reaction the women in this country should want men to have to the possible first female Vice Presidential candidate in history? Holy hell.

I thought Palin's performance at the debate was downright embarrassing and on top of that I have to read this clown's blog, stating more or less that Palin gave him an erection? Little starbursts my ass. Here's what I thought when Palin 'dropped' that first wink at us: 'Did she just wink at us like she was America's cocktail waitress?' Rich Lowry is on the verge of slapping Sarah Palin on the ass and asking her for another of those fantastic whiskey sours."

Her gender has nothing to do with why women are deserting SP in droves. When her candidacy was first announced, most women knew very little about her and were encouraged that a woman was on the ticket. But as soon as they started finding out more about her and her issues, that support waned.

I find it interesting that the right wing calls "sexism" when liberals attack her credentials, while they can say incredibly sexist things about her charm, winking, and "starbursts," completely undermining her qualifications, and that's okay?

What a different race this would have been if Hillary had been the candidate. The presidential debate would have been fascinating and far more interesting...and there would have been no Sarah Palin. Hillary's competence, experience, and intelligence makes SP look like a kindergartener.